WASHINGTON — With dysfunction, gridlock and squabbling the new normal in Washington, the Bipartisan Policy Center has assembled two dozen elder party statesmen and civic luminaries to brainstorm remedies.

“It’s a distinguished group with a lot of political history, and all of us feel like someone has to try to do something to come up with some solid ideas on how to break the dysfunction,” said former San Antonio Rep. Henry Bonilla, one of a number of Texans on the Commission on Political Reform announced today by the center. “I know it’s probably a long road and a difficult one.”

Another longtime San Antonio congressman, Democrat Charlie Gonzalez, who left office last month, will bring the rare perspective of someone whose father served in Congress for decades. Other Texans have ties to George W. Bush: longtime confidant Karen Hughes and Margaret Spellings, a former U.S. education secretary and policy adviser, former speechwriter Michael Gerson, and Eric Motley, a White House aide in charge of presidential appointments and now vice president of the Aspen Institute.

Hope Andrade, appointed in 2008 by Gov. Rick Perry as Texas’ first Latina secretary of state, also is taking part; she resigned in November after a controversy involving flawed efforts to purge dead or otherwise ineligible voters from voter rolls.

The commission’s formal work begins with a forum March 6 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library in California. Similar events will be held later this year in Philadelphia; Columbus, Ohio; and Boston.

“There’s a lot of ideas being tossed around. Everything from making recommendations on the Electoral College to trying to come up with a better idea for redistricting, because that always seems to be political poison every decade,” said Bonilla, one of the most powerful members of the House when his career was cut short, partly thanks to an unfavorable map.

One issue, he said, is that members of Congress spent so little time in Washington compared nowadays. That may ward off allegations they’re out of touch but it means they don’t get to know each other as well.

“It’s a different world,” Bonilla said, adding that current lawmakers confide their frustrations. “They’ll tell me it’s not fun anymore. There’s almost a prevailing bitterness.”